Heaven had always been painted as light.
But when Lina stepped through the first broken gate, barefoot on cracked marble, she saw the truth beneath the illusion:
It was built on fear.
And fear—unlike fire—rots.
The angels didn't greet her.
They watched.
From towers that once touched stars. From temples now silent. Their wings folded, their halos dimmed.
Because they knew what she was.
Not fallen.
Risen.
Andra walked at her side, silent as a blade before a kill. His presence alone made angels flinch, but it was Lina's fire they couldn't bear to meet.
She didn't speak until they reached the Hall of Judgement. The place she once prayed in. The place that turned its back.
Her voice cracked the sky.
> "You let them break me.
You let me burn—alone."
A seraph stepped forward, silver-winged, eyes hollow with guilt. "You were mortal. We could not interfere."
Lina smiled.
Not sweetly.
Not kindly.
> "You could have saved me. And now I've come to return the favor."
With one wave of her hand, flames licked across the pillars. Holy relics blackened. Prayers turned to ash. It wasn't destruction. It was a reckoning.
Andra stood behind her, his voice a low murmur. "Do we end them?"
She looked back at him—her king, her fire, her sin—and said, "No."
> "We remake them."
—
But not all bowed.
One angel did more than resist—hestruck.
A lance of pure light, cast from Heaven's forge, hurled straight at Lina's chest. It would have shattered any demon. It would have ended a lesser god.
It only angered her.
She caught it with one hand.
And crushed it.
Then her fire surged, wild and divine, coiling into wings that weren't made of feathers, but pure, wrath-born flame.
She rose from the steps.
Eyes glowing.
Crown burning.
> "You don't get to call yourselves righteous," she roared.
"Not when you watched. Not when I remember."
And when she spoke the old tongue—the one older than Heaven itself—the skies cracked, and the angels felltotheirknees.
Not because she demanded it.
Because they understood:
This was not vengeance.
This was evolution.